A Working Man review (2025)
A Working Man finds Jason Statham doing what he does best — navigating through a barebones plot with his penchant for busting heads as the last real action hero left standing.
Statham has entered this rarified air of action star where there’s no need for coming up with a cool title like The Terminator, Enter the Dragon, Die Hard or The Expendables. He can sell a movie on the basis of him looking menacing alone. There’s no need to put any effort into a catchy, memorable title when the most generic description of A Working Man will do just fine.
Statham has been leading action films long enough that one of the 80s genre forefathers, Sylvester Stallone has basically passed the torch to his Expendables co-star. Stallone co-wrote A Working Man with director David Ayer (End of Watch, Suicide Squad). Ayer is getting comfortable directing Statham as they teamed in the 2024 action flick The Beekeeper.
This time Statham is playing Levon Cade, a career soldier who retired to regain custody of his daughter, Merry (Isla Gie). Instead of navigating through war zones, Levon is the building supervisor for a family construction company.
He’s been part of the team long enough that he’s considered family by the husband-and-wife owners, Joe (Michael Peña) and Carla (Noemi Gonzalez) Garcia, and their 19-year-old daughter Jenny (Arianna Rivas).
It’s not glamorous work, but it has to do so Levon can pay for the attorneys to help him get full custody of Merry, as she’s staying with his disapproving father-in-law Dr. Roth (Richard Heap).
Jenny goes bar hopping with her friends and ends up getting kidnapped by Artemis (Eve Mauro) Viper (Emmett J. Scanlan, Krypton), the field agents for Dimi (Maximilian Osinski, Guns Up) a drug-dealer/sex trafficker who’s deeply connected with the Russian mob. With the local police a dead end, Joe and Carla beg Levon to help.
Before he can go back to that dark place again, Levon needs the all-clear from his fellow soldier buddy (David Harbour, The Thunderbolts*), who was blinded on their last mission together. Harbour and Statham have good chemistry together and make for believable longtime pals, so their scenes are entertaining even if they’re not necessary for the flow of A Working Man.
This feels like the Stallone influence on the script as he tends to write a sounding board supporting character for the main star in his action films.
At 116 minutes, A Working Man is about 30 minutes too long. The pacing suffers a bit from dragging some scenes out. Most noticeably the subplot where Levon has to partner with Dutch (Chidi Ajufo) the head of a biker gang that gets their drug supply from Dimi. It feels like a detour from Levon’s main objective of finding Jenny in a timely manner. Ajufo has a solid imposing presence and kinda felt like he could have carried his end just fine as the main villain for A Working Man 2.
MORE:
- DC Comics reviews 9/3/25 – Batman 1, JSA 11
- Eyes of Wakanda TV Series Episode Guide
- GI Joe Classified Series Cobra Rattler Gunner review No. 185 (2025)
- Alien: Earth – Metamorphosis review Ep.3
Regardless of the pacing issues, when Statham gets to showcase his special set of skills, A Working Man is a lot of fun. Statham’s movies are predictable in a comfort food kind of way. He’s going to look slick during the action sequences and there’s likely going to be some painful looking violence. And the bad guys actually get what they deserve.
Ayer raises the stakes by having the Russian mafia start to fight back with a pair of assassins who make the conflict even more personal for Levon. The action scenes are well laid out — Ayer never has a problem putting together elaborate and exciting shoot outs and Statham is always good for a well-timed quip.
A Working Man clocks in and gets the job done with little fuss or anything too unbelievable. The strength of the film is Statham being able to do this role in his sleep and not delivering a sleepy performance. This is a solid watch for action fans.
Rating: 8 out of 10
Photo Credit: Amazon MGM Studios
Get A Working Man on Blu-Ray now at Amazon.
As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.